Vaccinations

Here’s an indisputable fact: Vaccines have saved millions of lives. The vaccine discoveries of medical pioneers such as Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur introduced a new era of health care for humans. Smallpox, once the most feared disease in the world, is thought to be eradicated. Ask any senior citizen to name the great medical advances of this century, and he or she will invariably list the polio vaccine.

Arkansas canines and their humans have very good reason to celebrate the start of the new decade. That state’s new rule allowing for a three-year rabies vaccine became effective January 1, 2010. This means dogs in Arkansas will need to be vaccinated only every three years (after their initial first-year booster) instead of annually, as was previously required.

No good deed goes unpunished. That’s what Pam Rowley of Upper Brookville, New York, discovered last November, when the hospital administrator who always greeted her and 8-year-old Vizsla Gunner at the start of their monthly therapy-dog visits quietly took her aside to deliver some bad news.

Every year rattlesnakes bite more than 100,000 dogs in the United States, with an estimated 40% of bites resulting in severe reactions and fatal...

Once rabies symptoms appear in dogs there is no treatment. The only sure defense is the rabies vaccine regularly boosted and kept up to date.

Distemper in dogs is caused by paramyxovirus which attacks the respiratory, gastrointestinal, and nervous system. It is spread by sneezing, and shared food and water bowls.